Had an absolute blast with @walkercapla presenting our new work ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔇𝔬𝔬𝔯 at CultureHub. Thanks to everyone that came out to see it.
Thank you so much to our lighting designer:
(and expert photographer) Yung-Hung Sung @yhsung.design
Our creative consultant: Patrick Foley @ptrckfly
Our producers: Max @_maxnc_ and Jessie @jessie and CultureHub @culturehub_org
And everyone on the CultureHub Team: Billy, Mattie, DeAndra, Sangmin, Blair, and Tee. @billyclarknyc@mattieump@_soydee@blairajohnson@chanaver7
More to come in the future so stay tuned. I’m also starting a newsletter to let people know about future shows and projects. Sign up link in bio.
📷: Yung-Hung Sung
🌀Castle Door, created and performed by Walker Caplan and Matt Romein opens this weekend at CultureHub🌀
🏰 We released a few more tickets this morning. Thursday and Friday are sold out, but there are a few tickets left for the Saturday shows. Get them while you still can !!
In this two-person performance, creators Walker Caplan and Matt Romein use and abuse the conventions of confessional monologue theater while using video game engines to puppet emotive 3D avatars, aided by PowerPoint presentations and live camera feeds. Fantasies are corrupted by hijacked imaginations, bodies are mediated through digital boundaries, and emotions are misinterpreted again and again and again.
📸 Photo by Castle Door lighting designer Yung-Hung Sung
Friday, March 13th at 7pm SUPR OMEN will launch RINSE: Works in Progress. Doors open at 6:30, tickets are $10, and there will be a chance to converse with artists afterwards over a cash bar.
This quarterly event showcases our community by highlighting artists of all disciplines for 10 minute showings of developing ideas. Inspired by the desire for dialogue across genre, each evening is curated by C. Francis Fisher.
The March 13th program will feature visual artist Lemuel E. Saputra, theatre maker Matt Romein, performance artist Sonya Molansky, and comic writer Natalie Raskin.
Background animation credit: @robruthco
🌀 CASTLE DOOR 🌀 A two-person performance by Walker Caplan ( @walkercapla ) and Matt Romein ( @header_munging )🌀 A narcissistic tutor teaches a homeschooled teenager creative writing over Zoom. When the student’s short stories reveal an unusually repressed worldview, he starts to suspect something is wrong. But is that real— or itself just a convenient fantasy? 🌀
🏰 Produced by CultureHub, @_maxnc_ & @jessie with support from @nyscouncilonthearts
🏰 April 9-11. 🏰 Tickets drop Feb 24. 🏰
If you are in Amsterdam for @idfadoclab , be sure to catch Matt Romein’s (@header_munging ) “MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery,” a performance drawing upon the rich, milky history of text-based gaming, but in a theatrical context. It’s part of the IDFA DocLab Program & Competition and tickets are free for the 6:30PM performances through Monday!
🔗 Check the link bio for more info.
SYNOPSIS: The player’s task in this computer game sounds simple enough: deliver milk to various locations in the village. But nothing is as it seems in MILKMAN ZERO, which is played using text prompts. Customers make suggestive proposals, mugs of milk mysteriously never run dry, and the payment system appears to have been hacked by extraterrestrial beings. The computer game spurs the player on, subtly coercing them into subversive actions—and then playing dumb when critical questions are asked.
In a 30-minute stage performance in which he plays MILKMAN ZERO live on stage, Matt Romein shows how quickly and radically the interaction between human and computer can derail. Systemic violence gets normalized in the name of efficiency, and the player becomes a slave to their own tool. As he has shown in his past work, Romein nurtures a fascination with devices that enhance human potential—or dehumanize us as we increasingly bend to technology.
MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery is presented in collaboration with Onassis ONX.
Performing a new 30 minute iteration of MILKMAN ZERO in Amsterdam at @idfadoclab@idfafestival November 15-17. @james.la.bella and I have been cooking up some new material. Tickets are free / link in bio. If you’re in town for IDFA DocLab let me know. Would love to see some folks.
Seeing myself in the @nytimes playing basketball is very surreal. Been doing the Sunday Run since 2016 and it’s always a highlight of my week when I play. Thanks to @joelwalkowski for running it, @d.d.curry for getting me that initial invite to play and all the great people that come out and hoop every Sunday.
Beyond grateful to have had the opportunity to spend three weeks in Saratoga Springs at @yaddotoday creating new work, meeting incredible people, eating great food, and playing silly games late into the evening. Thank you to everyone I met and to everyone at Yaddo who works to make this space and opportunity possible.
It’s a Special Little Boy’s birthday! He’s turning 2nd grade. But all his family wants to talk about is Marcello, the newest member of the family. If he wants to have the best birthday ever, it looks like it’s up to him to make it happen.
GOD MODE is a live cinema theater experiment merging video game engines, facial motion capture, and digital avatars with live performance.
The Brick Theater @bricktheater
Interrobang: New Works ~ April 17 & 18
Created and Directed by Matt Romein
Written by James La Bella @james.la.bella
Performed by Matthew Antoci @antociantoci and Meaghan Robichaud @meaghanrobi
MATT ROMEIN !
MILKMAN ZERO - Excerpt from a new performance, a text-based video game about delivering milk. (Dramaturg + Concept - Peter Mills Weiss, Additional Writing - James La Bella, Additional Coding - Oren Shoham).
⛓️ matt-romein.com
📸 @photo_by_baranova
CATCH 78
7pm Saturday 1 March 1 at the🫥🐩
$20 cash at the door
FREE BEER (and seltzer)
🖤 the last unleashing at 51 Bergen 🖤
